For tragically obvious reasons the nation of Haiti has been in the news a lot lately, yet as more marketable events such as Obama’s State of the Union address enter the 24-hour news cycle and the dramatic search and rescue operations have been suspended by the Haitian government, perhaps it is finally time to take a look at the problems facing Haiti before and after the earthquake. As we all (hopefully) know the significance of Haiti cannot and should not be reduced to natural disaster. Haiti’s story is a sad one that has only culminated in the devastating earthquake.

Haiti and the United States have had intimate relations since both were slave societies, and both countries were the first two to liberate themselves from colonial rule. While the United States was merely beginning an era of expansion (of both free territories and slave territories), Haiti was only beginning her career as an exploited and stigmatized society. The reason for this, of course, was the former was a white-dominated slave society while the latter was a living definition of the hypocrisy of racism, slavery, and colonization. The first black republic was always doomed to suffer.

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After gaining her independence, Haiti was obligated to pay “reparations” to France until 1947, yet that was only the beginning of the exploitation of Haitians. The plantation system that flourished under the French naturally had to be abolished under the revolutionary government, but the indebted state that emerged could do little for its people beyond tax them. It is true that the Haitian government was corrupt, but the same could be said about any government, wealthy or not. One need only look at local, state, and national governments in the United States after the Civil War to know that, and even the Confederacy was granted a partial repudiation of debt. Haiti, of course, was never so lucky.

The twentieth century would hardly be kinder to Haiti than the nineteenth. From 1915 to 1934 Haiti was occupied by the United States military, even though most academics assume the period of American imperialism ended with her entrance into World War I. Post-Civil War Reconstruction had convinced many American leaders that blacks simply could not govern themselves, and indeed the initial invasion of Haiti was ordered by Woodrow Wilson, arguably the most racist president in American history. According to Eric Foner, under American occupation “the Haitian constitution was altered to permit alien landownership (which was barred after the revolution), the tax structure was revised to encourage sugar production, and plans were laid to promote large-scale investment of American capital.” The United States military would continue to occupy Haiti periodically until the present day, with Clinton and now Obama the most recent presidents to give such orders.

Here one can be led to think “that’s not fair. Obama is responding to the devastating earthquake.” Well here are some interesting facts about his policy towards relief in Haiti. For every dollar the US government spends in Haiti less than one cent has gone to the Haitian government, who should be allowed to lead the rescue and reconstruction efforts of their own people (one wonders if the notion among Americans that Haitians are incapable of self-government ever disintegrated). 42 cents of every dollar has gone to disaster assistance, 33 cents (a full third of the budget) has gone to military “aid” (and one wonders which military is being aided), and an unforgivably meager 9 cents to the dollar has gone towards food. Strangely, American spending on relief has more than tripled from $100 million to $379 million. The question, of course, is where all that money is going. It is probably too early to tell, but one wonders whether relief money is any safer in the hands of the United States Agency for Industrial Development (USAID) than it would be with the Haitian government.

My guess is that there is an understandable hesitance in the reader to make the earthquake in Haiti a political matter, but the fact is American-Haitian relations have always been political and deeply rooted in the economic interests of the United States government and corporations. The tragedy of Haiti is not one relating to a natural disaster. Earthquakes, albeit of lesser magnitudes, have hit Haiti many times. No, much like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans the tragedy if Haiti was man-made, and it is rooted in our relationship with what we have come to term “the Third World,” which is indeed worlds apart. It is a result of the hypocritical foreign policy of the United States Government, and the failure of most Americans to look ourselves in the mirror to see ourselves the way our neo-colonial subjects view us: as an imperialist threat to world peace. Let us not forget that as the West attempts to reconstruct Haiti.